COLUMN - Nuclear planning to the year 1,002,008: Bernd Debusmann

- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -

By Bernd Debusmann

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nevada (Reuters) - Will this barren mountain rising up to 4,950 feet from the Mojave desert look roughly the same in the year 1,002,008? That's a million years into the future.

The question may sound bizarre but its answer is key to the future of a decades-old, controversial project to store America's nuclear waste in the belly of Yucca Mountain, on the edge of a nuclear test site and 95 miles from Las Vegas. The narrow road from there winds through a desolate landscape of sparse vegetation -- creosote scrub, cactus and gnarled Joshua trees.

"This is probably the world's most intensely studied mountain," says Michael Voegele, one of the senior engineers on the project, standing beside the "Yucca Mucker", a 720-ton cylinder-shaped machine that has drilled a five-mile tunnel into the mountain. "And yet, there will be even more study."

Indeed. In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA.L revised its original safety standards for what would be the world's first deep underground nuclear mausoleum. Those standards were meant to protect the health of people living near Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years from the time the mountain is filled with 70,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste.

Ten thousand years is roughly twice mankind's recorded history. But a court in Washington ruled in 2004 that protection should reach farther into the future. The new standards "will protect public health and the environment for 1 million years," according to the EPA. "The Yucca Mountain facility will open only if it meets EPA's standards..."

The standards specify that for the first 10,000 years, future residents should not be exposed to more than 15 millirem of radioactivity per year. From year 10,001 to one million, the dose limit is now set at 100 millirem a year.

To put those limits into context: Princeton University estimates that the average American is exposed to 350 millirems per year, from sources that range from X-rays to food. Bananas, for example. (They contain potassium and a radioactive potassium isotope. Eating one or two a day adds up to the radioactivity of a chest x-ray a year).